When RFID technology is added to a system, such as a laboratory system, the RFID reader is typically directly coupled to the laboratory system. However, this makes it more difficult to swap RFID reader systems, and more difficult to leverage the RFID reader system to track other types of items. Additionally, the systems are often tied together such that only RFID technology can be used, and additional point-to-point connections may be incurred between the connected systems. For instance, in one embodiment, adding high volume RFID tracking of blood containers in Clinical Pathology on the same RFID reader system and direct connection as an existing setup of low volume tissue biopsies being tracked to Anatomic Pathology could result in less than 1% of the location updates received in the Anatomic Pathology system being for tissue biopsies. Or, a separate connection may be added to the RFID reader system and then both connections must then be filtered to the desired set of tags that need to cross the connection. This adds additional requirements to the RFID tag encodings to be able to embed information as to the type of item tagged to facilitate routing.